Bertha

Dr. Bonnet, my old friend--one sometimes has friends older than one's
self--had often invited me to spend some time with him at Riom, and, as I
did not know Auvergne, I made up my mind to visit him in the summer of
1876.

I arrived by the morning train, and the first person I saw on the
platform was the doctor. He was dressed in a gray suit, and wore a soft,
black, wide-brimmed, high-crowned felt hat, narrow at the top like a
chimney pot, a hat which hardly any one except an Auvergnat would wear,
and which reminded one of a charcoal burner. Dressed like that, the
doctor had the appearance of an old young man, with his spare body under
his thin coat, and his large head covered with white hair.

He embraced me with that evident pleasure which country people feel when
they meet long-expected friends, and, stretching out his arm, he said
proudly:

"This is Auvergne!" I saw nothing before me except a range of mountains,
whose summits, which resembled truncated cones, must have been extinct
volcanoes.

Then, pointing to the name of the station, he said:

"Riom, the fatherland of magistrates, the pride of the magistracy, and
which ought rather to be the fatherland of doctors."

"Why?" I, asked.

"Why?" he replied with a laugh. "If you transpose the letters, you have
the Latin word 'mori', to die. That is the reason why I settled here, my
young friend."

And, delighted at his own joke, he carried me off, rubbing his hands.

As soon as I had swallowed a cup of coffee, he made me go and see the
town. I admired the druggist's house, and the other noted houses, which
were all black, but as pretty as bric-a-brac, with their facades of
sculptured stone. I admired the statue of the Virgin, the patroness of
butchers, and he told me an amusing story about this, which I will relate
some other time, and then Dr. Bonnet said to me:

"I must beg you to excuse me for a few minutes while I go and see a
patient, and then I will take you to Chatel-Guyon, so as to show you the
general aspect of the town, and all the mountain chain of the Puy-de-Dome
before lunch. You can wait for me outside; I shall only go upstairs and
come down immediately."

He left me outside one of those old, gloomy, silent, melancholy houses,
which one sees in the provinces, and this one appeared to look
particularly sinister, and I soon discovered the reason. All the large
windows on the first floor were boarded half way up. The upper part of
them alone could be opened, as if one had wished to prevent the people
who were locked up in that huge stone box from looking into the street.

When the doctor came down again, I told him how it struck me, and he
replied:

"You are quite right; the poor creature who is living there must never
see what is going on outside. She is a madwoman, or rather an idiot,
what you Normans would call a Niente. It is a miserable story, but a
very singular pathological case at the same time. Shall I tell you?"

I begged him to do so, and he continued:

"Twenty years ago the owners of this house, who were my patients, had a
daughter who was like all other girls, but I soon discovered that while
her body became admirably developed, her intellect remained stationary.

"She began to walk very early, but she could not talk. At first I
thought she was deaf, but I soon discovered that, although she heard
perfectly, she did not understand anything that was said to her. Violent
noises made her start and frightened her, without her understanding how
they were caused.

"She grew up into a superb woman, but she was dumb, from an absolute want
of intellect. I tried all means to introduce a gleam of intelligence
into her brain, but nothing succeeded. I thought I noticed that she knew
her nurse, though as soon as she was weaned, she failed to recognize her
mother. She could never pronounce that word which is the first that
children utter and the last which soldiers murmur when they are dying on
the field of battle. She sometimes tried to talk, but she produced
nothing but incoherent sounds.

"When the weather was fine, she laughed continually, and emitted low
cries which might be compared to the twittering of birds; when it rained
she cried and moaned in a mournful, terrifying manner, which sounded like
the howling of a dog before a death occurs in a house.

"She was fond of rolling on the grass, as young animals do, and of
running about madly, and she would clap her hands every morning, when the
sun shone into her room, and would insist, by signs, on being dressed as
quickly as possible, so that she might get out.

"She did not appear to distinguish between people, between her mother and
her nurse, or between her father and me, or between the coachman and the
cook. I particularly liked her parents, who were very unhappy on her
account, and went to see them nearly every day. I dined with them quite
frequently, which enabled me to remark that Bertha (they had called her
Bertha) seemed to recognize the various dishes, and to prefer some to
others. At that time she was twelve years old, but as fully formed in
figure as a girl of eighteen, and taller than I was. Then the idea
struck me of developing her greediness, and by this means of cultivating
some slight power of discrimination in her mind, and to force her, by the
diversity of flavors, if not to reason, at any rate to arrive at
instinctive distinctions, which would of themselves constitute a kind of
process that was necessary to thought. Later on, by appealing to her
passions, and by carefully making use of those which could serve our
purpose, we might hope to obtain a kind of reaction on her intellect, and
by degrees increase the unconscious action of her brain.

"One day I put two plates before her, one of soup, and the other of very
sweet vanilla cream. I made her taste each of them successively, and
then I let her choose for herself, and she ate the plate of
cream. In a short time I made her very greedy, so greedy that it
appeared as if the only idea she had in her head was the desire for
eating. She perfectly recognized the various dishes, and stretched out
her hands toward those that she liked, and took hold of them eagerly, and
she used to cry when they were taken from her. Then I thought I would
try and teach her to come to the dining-room when the dinner bell rang.
It took a long time, but I succeeded in the end. In her vacant intellect
a vague correlation was established between sound and taste, a
correspondence between the two senses, an appeal from one to the other,
and consequently a sort of connection of ideas--if one can call that kind
of instinctive hyphen between two organic functions an idea--and so I
carried my experiments further, and taught her, with much difficulty, to
recognize meal times by the clock.

"It was impossible for me for a long time to attract her attention to the
hands, but I succeeded in making her remark the clockwork and the
striking apparatus. The means I employed were very simple; I asked them
not to have the bell rung for lunch, and everybody got up and went into
the dining-room when the little brass hammer struck twelve o'clock, but I
found great difficulty in making her learn to count the strokes. She ran
to the door each time she heard the clock strike, but by degrees she
learned that all the strokes had not the same value as far as regarded
meals, and she frequently fixed her eyes, guided by her ears, on the dial
of the clock.

"When I noticed that, I took care every day at twelve, and at six
o'clock, to place my fingers on the figures twelve and six, as soon as
the moment she was waiting for had arrived, and I soon noticed that she
attentively followed the motion of the small brass hands, which I had
often turned in her presence.

"She had understood! Perhaps I ought rather to say that she had grasped
the idea. I had succeeded in getting the knowledge, or, rather, the
sensation, of the time into her, just as is the case with carp, who
certainly have no clocks, when they are fed every day exactly at the same
time.

"When once I had obtained that result all the clocks and watches in the
house occupied her attention almost exclusively. She spent her time in
looking at them, listening to them, and in waiting for meal time, and
once something very funny happened. The striking apparatus of a pretty
little Louis XVI clock that hung at the head of her bed having got out of
order, she noticed it. She sat for twenty minutes with her eyes on the
hands, waiting for it to strike ten, but when the hands passed the figure
she was astonished at not hearing anything; so stupefied was she, indeed,
that she sat down, no doubt overwhelmed by a feeling of violent emotion
such as attacks us in the face of some terrible catastrophe. And she had
the wonderful patience to wait until eleven o'clock in order to see what
would happen, and as she naturally heard nothing, she was suddenly either
seized with a wild fit of rage at having been deceived and imposed upon
by appearances, or else overcome by that fear which some frightened
creature feels at some terrible mystery, and by the furious impatience of
a passionate individual who meets with some obstacle; she took up the
tongs from the fireplace and struck the clock so violently that she broke
it to pieces in a moment.

"It was evident, therefore, that her, brain did act and calculate,
obscurely it is true, and within very restricted limits, for I could
never succeed in making her distinguish persons as she distinguished the
time; and to stir her intellect, it was necessary to appeal to her
passions, in the material sense of the word, and we soon had another, and
alas! a very terrible proof of this!

"She had grown up into a splendid girl, a perfect type of a race, a sort
of lovely and stupid Venus. She was sixteen, and I have rarely seen such
perfection of form, such suppleness and such regular features. I said
she was a Venus; yes, a fair, stout, vigorous Venus, with large, bright,
vacant eyes, which were as blue as the flowers of the flax plant; she had
a large mouth with full lips, the mouth of a glutton, of a sensualist, a
mouth made for kisses. Well, one morning her father came into my
consulting room with a strange look on his face, and, sitting down
without even replying to my greeting, he said:

"'I want to speak to you about a very serious matter. Would it be
possible--would it be possible for Bertha to marry?'

"'Bertha to marry! Why, it is quite impossible!'

"'Yes, I know, I know,' he replied. 'But reflect, doctor. Don't you
think--perhaps--we hoped--if she had children--it would be a great shock
to her, but a great happiness, and--who knows whether maternity might not
rouse her intellect?'

"I was in a state of great perplexity. He was right, and it was possible
that such a new situation, and that wonderful instinct of maternity,
which beats in the hearts of the lower animals as it does in the heart of
a woman, which makes the hen fly at a dog's jaws to defend her chickens,
might bring about a revolution, an utter change in her vacant mind, and
set the motionless mechanism of her thoughts in motion. And then,
moreover, I immediately remembered a personal instance. Some years
previously I had owned a spaniel bitch who was so stupid that I could do
nothing with her, but when she had had puppies she became, if not exactly
intelligent, yet almost like many other dogs who had not been thoroughly
broken.

"As soon as I foresaw the possibility of this, the wish to get Bertha
married grew in me, not so much out of friendship for her and her poor
parents as from scientific curiosity. What would happen? It was a
singular problem. I said in reply to her father:

"'Perhaps you are right. You might make the attempt, but you will never
find a man to consent to marry her.'

"'I have found somebody,' he said, in a low voice.

"I was dumfounded, and said: 'Somebody really suitable? Some one of your
own rank and position in society?'

"'Decidedly,' he replied.

"'Oh! And may I ask his name?'

"'I came on purpose to tell you, and to consult you. It is Monsieur
Gaston du Boys de Lucelles.'

"I felt inclined to exclaim: 'The wretch!' but I held my tongue, and
after a few moments' silence I said:

"'Oh! Very good. I see nothing against it.'

"The poor man shook me heartily by the hand.

"'She is to be married next month,' he said.

"Monsieur Gaston du Boys de Lucelles was a scapegrace of good family,
who, after having spent all that he had inherited from his father, and
having incurred debts in all kinds of doubtful ways, had been trying to
discover some other means of obtaining money, and he had discovered this
method. He was a good-looking young fellow, and in capital health, but
fast; one of that odious race of provincial fast men, and he appeared to
me to be as suitable as anyone, and could be got rid of later by making
him an allowance. He came to the house to pay his addresses and to strut
about before the idiot girl, who, however, seemed to please him. He
brought her flowers, kissed her hands, sat at her feet, and looked at her
with affectionate eyes; but she took no notice of any of his attentions,
and did not make any distinction between him and the other persons who
were about her.

"However, the marriage took place, and you may guess how my curiosity was
aroused. I went to see Bertha the next day to try and discover from her
looks whether any feelings had been awakened in her, but I found her just
the same as she was every day, wholly taken up with the clock and dinner,
while he, on the contrary, appeared really in love, and tried to rouse
his wife's spirits and affection by little endearments and such caresses
as one bestows on a kitten. He could think of nothing better.

"I called upon the married couple pretty frequently, and I soon perceived
that the young woman knew her husband, and gave him those eager looks
which she had hitherto only bestowed on sweet dishes.

"She followed his movements, knew his step on the stairs or in the
neighboring rooms, clapped her hands when he came in, and her face was
changed and brightened by the flames of profound happiness and of desire.

"She loved him with her whole body and with all her soul to the very
depths of her poor, weak soul, and with all her heart, that poor heart of
some grateful animal. It was really a delightful and innocent picture of
simple passion, of carnal and yet modest passion, such as nature had
implanted in mankind, before man had complicated and disfigured it by all
the various shades of sentiment. But he soon grew tired of this ardent,
beautiful, dumb creature, and did not spend more than an hour during the
day with her, thinking it sufficient if he came home at night, and she
began to suffer in consequence. She used to wait for him from morning
till night with her eyes on the clock; she did not even look after the
meals now, for he took all his away from home, Clermont, Chatel-Guyon,
Royat, no matter where, as long as he was not obliged to come home.

"She began to grow thin; every other thought, every other wish, every
other expectation, and every confused hope disappeared from her mind, and
the hours during which she did not see him became hours of terrible
suffering to her. Soon he ceased to come home regularly of nights; he
spent them with women at the casino at Royat and did not come home until
daybreak. But she never went to bed before he returned. She remained
sitting motionless in an easy-chair, with her eyes fixed on the hands of
the clock, which turned so slowly and regularly round the china face on
which the hours were painted.

"She heard the trot of his horse in the distance and sat up with a start,
and when he came into the room she got up with the movements of an
automaton and pointed to the clock, as if to say: 'Look how late it is!'

"And he began to be afraid of this amorous and jealous, half-witted
woman, and flew into a rage, as brutes do; and one night he even went so
far as to strike her, so they sent for me. When I arrived she was
writhing and screaming in a terrible crisis of pain, anger, passion, how
do I know what? Can one tell what goes on in such undeveloped brains?

"I calmed her by subcutaneous injections of morphine, and forbade her to
see that man again, for I saw clearly that marriage would infallibly kill
her by degrees.

"Then she went mad! Yes, my dear friend, that idiot went mad. She is
always thinking of him and waiting for him; she waits for him all day and
night, awake or asleep, at this very moment, ceaselessly. When I saw her
getting thinner and thinner, and as she persisted in never taking her
eyes off the clocks, I had them removed from the house. I thus made it
impossible for her to count the hours, and to try to remember, from her
indistinct reminiscences, at what time he used to come home formerly. I
hope to destroy the recollection of it in time, and to extinguish that
ray of thought which I kindled with so much difficulty.

"The other day I tried an experiment. I offered her my watch; she took
it and looked at it for some time; then she began to scream terribly, as
if the sight of that little object had suddenly awakened her memory,
which was beginning to grow indistinct. She is pitiably thin now, with
hollow and glittering eyes, and she walks up and down ceaselessly, like a
wild beast in its cage; I have had gratings put on the windows, boarded
them up half way, and have had the seats fixed to the floor so as to
prevent her from looking to see whether he is coming.

"Oh! her poor parents! What a life they must lead!"

We had got to the top of the hill, and the doctor turned round and said
to me:

"Look at Riom from here."

The gloomy town looked like some ancient city. Behind it a green, wooded
plain studded with towns and villages, and bathed in a soft blue haze,
extended until it was lost in the distance. Far away, on my right, there
was a range of lofty mountains with round summits, or else cut off flat,
as if with a sword, and the doctor began to enumerate the villages, towns
and hills, and to give me the history of all of them. But I did not
listen to him; I was thinking of nothing but the madwoman, and I only saw
her. She seemed to be hovering over that vast extent of country like a
mournful ghost, and I asked him abruptly:

"What has become of the husband?"

My friend seemed rather surprised, but after a few moments' hesitation,
he replied:

"He is living at Royat, on an allowance that they made him, and is quite
happy; he leads a very fast life."

As we were slowly going back, both of us silent and rather low-spirited,
an English dogcart, drawn by a thoroughbred horse, came up behind us and
passed us rapidly. The doctor took me by the arm.

"There he is," he said.

I saw nothing except a gray felt hat, cocked over one ear above a pair of
broad shoulders, driving off in a cloud of dust.